clockwork
by Appointment
Summary: Harry has a nightmare. Leave a review, please. Edit - 3rd Place in the Nightmare Competition.


There was a little boy with dark hair, ever so messy. Aunt Petunia cut it and gelled it, and it always found itself tangled once more. The little boy also had green eyes, green like the forest. His aunt and uncle never looked into them, though. Dudley only hit him and bullied him – never took the chance to look at them. Other people never saw them much. He often wondered what they would think of them.

The little boy stares into the mirror on the wall of the dining room. His eyes are different from those around him. He's not paying attention, really.

The sky is dreary and blanched, and the little boy's heart is beating fast, he's in trouble now. He's tripped, knocking over an old vase his aunt Petunia had liked. Uncle Vernon grabs him by the hair, pulling him back into the hall.

"Let me go!" he cries. His small hands claw at the meatier ones gripping his head.

He feels angry. The window breaks.

Confusion runs through him; _he didn't mean to, he didn't even touch it - how?_

He's in more trouble than he started with.

Cold air spills into the room, and the sudden explosion of glass and wintry gusts shocks everyone in the room, and Harry runs.

He runs, just as quickly as his little legs can carry him, _downdowndown_ to the basement, where it's dark and dim and quiet and they can't find him, they won't find him.

_They can't find me. _

_Thudthudthud_, Uncle Vernon comes down the stairs.

He wishes for his mother, for his father.

"Where are you, boy?" he growls.

Harry pushes himself a little deeper into the old box he's nestling in.

_He can't find me. Please don't find me. _

"Come out!"

He whimpers quietly at the voice, almost as if he was some sort of soul-eating monster. He'd heard about them – only from the vents though. Aunt Petunia only read Dudley storybooks before bed; it was never Harry. He often wondered if it was because of the spiders that hung from the boards of the staircase. She didn't come down there often.

Footsteps draw him from his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut, wishing his uncle wasn't there. Then, there's another sound. Creaky hinges of the basement door, the doorknob connecting loudly with the wall.

"I know you're in here, boy." he snarls – _it_ snarls. More of a beast than a man. Men on television didn't act this way. He wondered if his uncle Vernon just happened to be something else.

Harry sees a large pair of slippers in front of his own feet, parallel to the box. He kneels.

"You're going to get it now."

And just as the larger man's hands tear at the collar of his baggy t-shirt, everything seems to disappear in front of him and – _it was a dream._

Just a dream.

Harry sits up in bed, no longer a small, naïve child from underneath a set of stairs, but a grown man of twenty-five. He wipes sweat from his brow and shifts uncomfortably. His mind often takes its own opportunity to visit his childhood, to dig up old graves and toss the corpse about.

They were never happy dreams.

"Harry?" says a feebly stirring voice from his side – he's woken Ginny up. Again.

"Go back to sleep – it's nothing."

Instead of listening to him, she turns over. She always seems to know.

"You've had another bad dream?"

"The same."

She sits up, and wraps an arm around him. He's shaking and he hasn't realized it yet – or maybe he has. He'd often woke like this. He lets out a long, heavy breath and his eyes fail to adjust to the dark. The pale illumination of the moon from beyond the rainy window blurs everything around him.

"You're okay now, Harry. You aren't there anymore."

Hands on a clock that sits on the nightstand change – it's nearly four in the morning.

"I'm okay."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

He smiles at her insipidly, his chest still feeling constricted. She kisses him on the forehead.

"Go to sleep, now – we've only got an hour or so before James'll wake up again."

He chuckles lightly, this time genuinely, and lets his head fall back onto the pillow.

Although, there's not a chance he's going to let sleep claim him once more tonight.

* * *

><p>AN: Written for the Nightmare Competition. Personally, I thought delving back into Harry's childhood worked well. Inspired by the song Anne Elephant by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Leave a review, please! Don't read and **not** leave one. I don't own Harry Potter.


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